“You mean me landing in your lap? It does seem to be happening alot,” Jocasta teased before blinking her eyelashes and vanishing in another puff of smoke, only to reappear a few feet away.

“Hey I wonder if I can…” *POOF* she materialized ten feet in the air, fell a few feet and then vanished again reappearing even higher before letting out a squawk and falling into some bushes.

“Were you just trying to fly?” Beren asked as he made his way over to her to make sure she was ok. Jocasta sat up and rubbed her rump, shaking broken twigs from her hair.

“Well, it was worth a try,” she admitted. It turned out focusing on where you were going was pretty difficult when you were in freefall and hadn’t had time to properly get your bearings. The range of the thing seemed to be fairly limited, but it was still an impressive piece of enchanting. Jocasta who had manufactured her fair share of enchanted trinkets over the years wasn’t even sure she would have known where to start, though she was optimistic that she could learn from studying the thing.

“Maybe if I…” she began but Beren held up a hand for silence, freezing Jocasta mid word.

“Someone is coming,” he said urgently, his senses evidently keener than hers when it came to the ways of the outdoors.

 

“There is no guarantee the mean us any harm,” Jocasta replied, attempting to convince herself as much as Beren.

“No guarantee they aren’t more assassins, or orcs for that matter,” Beren countered. The sound of horses in the distance was evident to Jocasta now as well and she looked around.

“Should we, hide or something?” she suggested but Beren shook his head.

“A blind man could track us in the snow,” he told her, making a gesture to the line of foot prints that terminated in the churned up area that they currently occupied.

 

“Ok… so do you have a plan?” she asked. Beren looked at her and then looked at the sarong, a slow smile coming to his face.

“Matter of fact, I do.”

 

Beren was standing in the open when the three horsemen came into view. They wore the tabards of the Leo Mortis and their mounts steamed in the chill air from hard riding. All three wore broad rimmed conical helms and all had crossbows across the pomels of their saddles, and shields slung from their backs. The way they hefted their weapons as they caught sight of Beren dispeled Jocasta’s hopeful theory that they were simply fellow travelers.

 

“Stop their foreigner,” the leader said in a raspy voice, “we got some questions for you. Don’t much like folk who pick fights with our brothers.”

“I’m not picking a fight with anyone,” Beren protested, but it seemed to make little difference.

“Where is the bitch?” the second rider asked. Beren recognised him as the drunken soldier he had confronted in the tavern, and any hope of a peaceful resolution swiftly drained away. Beren made in indistinct gesture towards the treeline, where a single set of footprints dinted the snow.

“Answering nature's call,” he replied with a helpless shrug. The leader casually pointed his crossbow at Beren.

“Maybe I’ll go answer it too,” the second rider leered, swinging down from his saddle and adjusting his belt lewdly. 

 

*POOF*

 

“Sounds good,” Jocata said as she appeared on the back of his vacated horse out of thin air, shivering slightly from the covering of snow that had concealed her.

“Wha…” the mercenary began. The leader began to squeeze the trigger of his weapon but the flat of Jocasta’s sword, for once unsheathed, caught his horse a ringing blow across the rump. The horse reared back in shock, dumped its startled rider and bolted off down the scrubby trail at a flat gallop. The third merc tried to wheel around, but Beren bounded to his side, grabbed him by the leg and yanked him out of the saddle, twisting to turn the fall into a throw which hurled the confused lion into his dismounted comrades, sending all three men crashing to the snow in a jangling heap of armor, shields, and chainmail. With considerably more grace than Jocasta could have managed, Beren swung up into the saddle and wheeled the horse around.

“Enjoy the walk boys,” Jocasta waved, and kicked her heels against her steed’s flank, almost spoiling the moment of bravado by half falling out of the saddle as the beast lurched back down the trail. Grasping its neck she pulled herself upright and headed back towards the main road.